Erika could still remember what the emaciated woman had looked like hooked up to a ventilator in the ICU over at St. Francis.
“Yup, she’s still on Market.” She put her phone away, and took note of the uniforms who were bringing over a privacy screen. “It won’t take me long.”
“As I said, I’ll take care of things here.”
She nodded and murmured a few more things to Kip, not that she was tracking—and then she was walking to her car, stepping over brown-paper-bag-wrapped bottles and twisted-up cloth wads that could have been towels, shirts, sweaters. As she came up to her unmarked and unlocked it with her remote, the sense that she was being watched brought her head around.
Reaching up to the nape of her neck, she rubbed at the tingling sensation and then she looked back at the scene, which was only about fifty feet away. In the lee of the brick wall, the uniformed officers were unfolding the screen and Kip was kneeling where she had just been, talking into his phone, recording notes.
As a breeze came off the river, she smelled shore funk and dirt and the greasy smoke of trash burning in those steel drums.
Everything was right about this… just like back at headquarters. And yet her instincts were telling her—
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something red, and she pivoted quick. Then she frowned and wondered if she was seeing right. The flash of one-of-these-things-does-not-belong was actually a woman, and she was leaning against one of the bridge supports, looking as out of place as a cultivated rose in the middle of a landfill. With long, wavy brunette hair and a breathtakingly beautiful face, she was wearing nothing but Christmas-red skintight leggings and a matching bustier, seemingly impervious to the cold.
The scent of a grapey perfume drifted into Erika’s nose.
Poison by Dior, she thought. God, she hadn’t thought of that oldie-but-goodie since college, when she and her friends had bought designer perfumes on the cheap from CVS’s locked case of rejects, resales, and fakes.
“Erika? You forget something?”
Erika jumped and glanced back at the scene. Kip had risen to his feet and was staring over as if he were thinking about doing a welfare check of his own. While he fiddled with the navy-blue-and-gold bow tie that peeked out under his peacoat’s lapels, she realized he was wearing the same expression Trey had had back at Primrose—after she’d emerged from the Landreys’ bathroom.
“Yup, just great,” she called back to her colleague.
Opening the driver’s side door, she dumped herself behind the wheel and immediately locked the unmarked. As she started the engine, she looked back to where the brunette had been leaning against the bridge pylon.
The woman was gone.
As if she had never existed.
Erika squeezed her eyes shut. The sense that the world around her wasn’t as solid as it had seemed made her want to tear up. Made her want to sob. Especially as she had a feeling she was going to find another dead body when she got over to that address on Market.
But instead of losing it, she put her car in drive and hit the gas.
* * *
Over by the bridge’s support, the demon Devina made herself invisible not because she couldn’t handle that cop. Detective. Whatever the fuck the woman was.
Nah, she poof’d out because she was looking to have some fun with this. God knew there was nothing much else happening in her life, and as she felt herself once again falling into the sulk that had dogged her for the last couple of months, she had to do something to cheer herself up.
Driving Balthazar’s woman insane was going to be a little pet project.
Unless that fucking Book gets off its ass, she thought as an utterly uninspiring American sedan drove off. Why did it have to be such a little bitch?
That piece of shit collection of parchment had given so much to so many as it had come down through the millennia: Death to enemies, riches to the greedy, sickness as an act of vengeance, lovers back where they belonged. Always on its terms, though.
That last one was the problem, of course. The thing was like a gun with an opinion about its targets.
“What the hell do I have to do to get what I deserve—”
Not much really. Just jump in front of a train.
Gritting her teeth, Devina pivoted around to the disembodied voice—and got an eyeful of somebody who, under different circumstances, would totally have been worth a fuck or two.
Lassiter, the fallen angel, was standing in the cold wind just as she was, half naked and unaffected by the outside temperature. With his muscular torso bare except for all his gold chains, and his blond-and-black hair blowing around his handsome face, he was like Magic Mike without a stage. And of course, those beautiful gossamer wings rising up on both sides of him were a nice touch, too.